Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Jun 9, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min · 15 segments
Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical competition felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. At the…
Mia BennettGuest[audience applauding] So Mia, so you've, uh, been studying the Arctic since long before it became front-page news.
Uh, now, what first pulled you towards the far north? Was there a moment, a place, a trip?
And I suppose from San Francisco, uh, what kind of drew me north was probably just my, um, some of my family's heritage.
So my dad's side of the family has a Swedish-speaking Finnish heritage, and as a student at Lowell High School, I started teaching myself Swedish as one does, [chuckles] and that led to, uh, study abroad in Sweden, and then I did an internship at the US Embassy in Oslo in two thousand and eight.
That was the year, if you might recall, Russia planted its flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole.
So all of that kind of just, um, really fascinated me, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I thought at the same time I should kind of flesh out my CV as an undergraduate at UCLA, so I applied to run the blog on the Arctic for the Foreign Policy Association.
[laughing] And over time, I took that blog independent, which became Cryopolitics, and I've kind of been going with things ever since and continue to be fascinated by the region and particularly by the people who live there too.
Brilliant.
So if you don't mind me asking, how did the Russians plant a flag on the sea floor? [chuckles]
The-- And a lot of money was involved, Swedish pharmaceutical money, but also the Russian government, so.
[audience applauding] So Mia, so you've, uh, been studying the Arctic since long before it became front-page news.
Uh, now, what first pulled you towards the far north? Was there a moment, a place, a trip?
And I suppose from San Francisco, uh, what kind of drew me north was probably just my, um, some of my family's heritage.
So my dad's side of the family has a Swedish-speaking Finnish heritage, and as a student at Lowell High School, I started teaching myself Swedish as one does, [chuckles] and that led to, uh, study abroad in Sweden, and then I did an internship at the US Embassy in Oslo in two thousand and eight.
That was the year, if you might recall, Russia planted its flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole.
So all of that kind of just, um, really fascinated me, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I thought at the same time I should kind of flesh out my CV as an undergraduate at UCLA, so I applied to run the blog on the Arctic for the Foreign Policy Association.
[laughing] And over time, I took that blog independent, which became Cryopolitics, and I've kind of been going with things ever since and continue to be fascinated by the region and particularly by the people who live there too.
Brilliant.
So if you don't mind me asking, how did the Russians plant a flag on the sea floor? [chuckles]
The-- And a lot of money was involved, Swedish pharmaceutical money, but also the Russian government, so.
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3 of 6
Slow-Motion Chernobyl at Sea
A nuclear nightmare brews beneath Arctic waters
No Peeing Toward Russia
Border signs capture unusual cross-cultural bathroom humor
Greenland Becomes A Flashpoint
Here's why Greenland suddenly matters so much
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